Brain Storm

by Warren Murphy

  Remo had decided his time might best be served trying to locate Lothar Holz.

  Holz was a vice president, Remo knew, so it seemed logical he'd be wherever it was vice presidents hung out. Since the building didn't seem large enough to house an eighteen-hole golf course, Remo opted to check the executive office suite.

  He abandoned the R&D level and took the stairwell at the end of the hallway up to the offices.

  He found the place swarming with tanned, trim executives, just a hair or two on the younger side of middle age. Their expensive suits were tailored to perfection, and as they walked past Remo, he over-heard them discussing everything from actuarial tables to market placement to on-line strategy. It was worse than any image of hell the nuns at Saint The-resa's Orphanage had tried to instill in him.

  Remo assumed that someone along the way would try to stop him. He wore his usual black T-shirt, black chinos and loafers. In this sea of suits, Remo thought he stuck out like a sore thumb. What he didn't realize was that in a company used to many computer-related projects, he wasn't dressed unusually when compared to any of the computer

  programmers on staff. It was assumed by everyone that Remo was just another programming nerd.

  Everyone, that was, except for Lothar Holz's secretary. "Hello, there," the girl purred when Remo entered the office at the end of the hall. She placed an emery board she had been drawing languidly across her index fingernail into the top drawer of her desk.

  "This is Holz's office?" he asked.

  "Uh-huh," she said. She leaned forward. "Can I do anything for you? Anything at all?"

  "You can cool your jets. I'm here for Holz."

  Remo headed for the door, but the girl was quick.

  She leaped from behind her desk and plastered herself against the inner-office door.

  Her body was pressed between Remo and the

  door.

  "Mr. Holz isn't in right now."

  "I can hear his heart beating through the door."

  "That's mine." She grabbed Remo's hand and placed it on her chest. "Let's go someplace and talk," she urged.

  Remo didn't have time for this. He tapped the woman lightly on the inside of her wrist. She gasped once loudly, her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed sideways onto the office sofa. A broad smile stretched across her overly made-up features.

  Remo popped the flimsy door lock and entered the inner office.

  The pain from the Dynamic Interface System signal was immediate and intense. It was far more powerful than it had been the day before.

  It felt as if someone were dragging his brain and spinal cord out of his body through a raw hole in the back of his neck.

  Then all at once, the pain receded.

  Lothar Holz was seated behind his desk. A row of tinted windows behind him overlooked a grassy courtyard. Beyond the courtyard was the matching PlattDeutsche building, reflecting its sister structure in its glassy facade.

  Remo tried to lunge for Holz, but was rooted in place. He heard the door behind him close and saw Holz's male assistant step out from his peripheral vision and move across the office to stand behind his boss.

  4'Don't bother to struggle. You know how pointless that is."

  Remo gritted his teeth. "Not as pointless as you might think."

  He was surprised to find that, unlike the previous day, the impulses weren't arrested when he tried to speak.

  "We've eliminated certain aspects of the program.

  Speech, most involuntary responses. The pickup time is greatly increased. You can thank Dr. Smith for that. His input—so to speak—has helped us a great deal. He delivered you over to us in every sense of the word."

  Holz grinned triumphantly.

  Remo felt foolish. He wanted to say something like You 7/ never get away with this, but the fact was he had already experienced the futility of trying to battle the powerful radio signal. He had tried for hours the last time and had failed. He screwed his mouth tightly shut and stared stonily ahead.

  Holz tapped a pen on his desk. "When the interface van didn't check in, the entire building was wired yesterday for your eventual return. Sort of a Sinanju frequency. I don't suppose you'd want to tell me where the van is."

  "Go goose a gorilla."

  "Your cooperation is irrelevant—we will find out what we want to know easily enough."

  Remo remained silent.

  "Understand this, Remo, your consciousness may still be yours, but your body now works for me."

  Holz turned to his assistant.

  "The interface van is at the sanitarium in Rye. Get it." The man nodded and move toward the door.

  Holz called after him. "If Smith attempts to stop you, kill him."

  Remo heard the door close behind him.

  "It became necessary to import assistance on your unique case," Holz said. "You might be curious to see how we're progressing." He called downstairs on his office phone and instructed the technical staff to move Remo down to the fourth floor. Holz then went over to the broken office door and pulled it open.

  Remo felt his legs kick in automatically. Woodenly. Again he felt the sensation of some outside power forcing its will upon him.

  Though he tried to stop it, he felt the interface signal coursing into his brain, seeping down into his limbs. In spite of his determination, he knew it was no use. He followed Holz out the door.

  The expression on Holz's face was insufferably smug.

  Remo wanted to rip the smile right off his smarmy face. And unbeknownst to Holz, he still had one chance. One thing the man hadn't bargained on.

  Remo prayed the Master of Sinanju would be able to locate the source of the signal and stop it once and for all.

  They had nearly been killed.

  Von Breslau seemed to be taking the whole thing in stride, but maybe he didn't understand what a close call it had been. Only Dr. Curt Newton knew that they had made it by the skin of their teeth.

  The old Asian had blown into the room like a man possessed.

  His hands flailed; his legs pumped. Jaw clenching furiously, he had swooped toward them.

  He was halfway to them when his actions began to slow.

  The signal had kicked in automatically, as it had been programmed to do, but there was a time lag.

  The Dynamic Interface System signal hadn't been able to cerebellum lock as quickly as usual. If the mainframes hadn't already been programmed with the information obtained from the younger one, they would never have stopped the Asian.

  His speed continued to decrease as he came across the room. In the end, he was like a child's toy with worn-out batteries.

  He froze a foot away from Newton.

  "What is this sorcery!" the Master of Sinanju demanded. His hazel eyes were sparks of uncompre-hending fury.

  Newton ignored Chiun. He tried to copy the old doctor's calm demeanor, though his heart pounded at the closeness of Chiun's attack.

  He spoke directly to von Breslau.

  "You'll be interested to know we've just refined the program to include speech. Before, we were forced to take hold of everything. It took up tons of computer space. Now we're able to be much more selective."

  Chiun's eyes were wide in shock as he tried desperately to move his limbs. He couldn't budge them an inch.

  The test subject seemed baffled by the strange ap-parition in the kimono. Newton tapped him on the leg. "Why don't you take off for now? We'll call you back when we need you."

  The man nodded his understanding. He hopped down from the gurney and began buttoning his shirt.

  He paused a moment, startled. "What—?"

  He held his hands out in wonder. The pads of his thumbs and forefingers were covered with a faint white dust. He had crushed one of his plastic buttons to powder.

  "A result of the test," Newton said quickly. "Just take it easy on things for the rest of the day. Until we can get back to you."

  The man left the room, staring in amazement at his own hands.

  Vo
n Breslau had shuffled over to Chiun. He brought his face to within inches of the old Korean. "This one is very old," he said to Newton. He looked even more unhappy than usual.

  "An understatement, I'd say," Newton agreed.

  "His physical reactions are astounding for a man of any age. But they're even more astonishing for someone of his obviously advanced years."

  "You have lived a long life," von Breslau said to Chiun.

  "Longer than an apricot. Not nearly as long as a mountain." The Master of Sinanju had contained his initial rage. Through a monumental effort, he held himself in check.

  "You were Master when Berlin fell?"

  Chiun did not speak. His eyes were as cold and barren as the belly of the deepest, iciest sea. His mouth was a razor slit.

  "You murdered the chancellor." It was a statement of fact, as well as an accusation.

  "If you refer to the strutting little fool with the comical mustache, he ingested poison and shot himself when he heard the Master was coming. Double ignominy for a preening jackanapes. This, of course, after he had bravely taken the lives of a pregnant woman and a dog."

  "You lie!"

  "He was a coward who sent fools to die for his base cause. His black-booted storm-poopers were de-valuing the market for true assassins."

  Dr. Erich von Breslau's normally bitter features had slowly churned into a burning fury. "Liar! You are a murderer! And you will stand and watch, filthy Korean mongrel. You will watch while I wrap my hands around your own lying throat and squeeze the life from you."

  The arms of the Nazi doctor shook with rage as he reached for the unguarded throat of the Master of Sinanju.

  Though von Breslau had the determination, it was unlikely he had the strength to follow through on his threat. He never found out. For at the precise moment his palms brushed Chiun's Adam's apple, Lothar Holz entered the lab, Remo in tow.

  "Doctor, stop!" Holz raced across the room and grabbed von Breslau's wrists. His hands had just encircled Chiun's throat. Curt Newton, who until that moment was a spectator in the exchange between the pair, joined Holz. Together they pulled von Breslau away from Chiun.

  "He will die!" von Breslau barked.

  "That is not the plan!" Holz said.

  "It is my plan!" von Breslau was furious. Spittle sprayed from his mouth as he spoke. His eyes were daggers of hatred aimed at Chiun.

  "Curt, please see that this one is transferred down here." Holz nodded to Remo.

  Newton reluctantly pulled himself away from von Breslau. He called to the regular interface labs to have the signal controlling Remo switched over to the subordinate mainframe in the current lab.

  When Newton was out of earshot, Holz lowered his voice. "Four wants both Sinanju masters."

  "Those of Four do not understand," von Breslau said.

  "They understand," Holz whispered harshly.

  "This has been a costly investment. The Americans were not likely to buy into the interface technology anytime in the near future. With the abilities of these men at our disposal, we can recoup our investment a thousandfold. Immediately."

  "We don't need them. Your machines can give us what they have. I can make an army like them long after they are gone."

  "We don't know that yet. Are you willing to risk the fury of those in command on a single test?"

  Von Breslau considered. At long last he nodded.

  "Agreed. For now," he whispered. To Chiun, he said loudly, "Remember. You live at my convenience, Korean."

  "You die at mine," the Master of Sinanju responded levelly.

  Holz smiled warmly. "Doctor?" he said to Newton. He pointed to Remo. He indicated the floor near Chiun with a nod.

  Understanding, the scientist punched a few rapid commands into his computer. The interface signal brought Remo from his place near the door, over to Chiun.

  The two men stood side by side, motionless. Neither was able to gain comfort from even a sideward glance at the other. They were blocks of deep-frozen ice. Holz clapped his hands together warmly. "Imagine. I have the only two living Masters of Sinanju under my control. Yours is a tradition which spreads back, what, thousands of years?"

  "You seem to know a fat lot about us," Remo said. His words were thick with loathing.

  Holz beamed. "Actually I probably never would have heard of you," he admitted, "if not for my grandfather."

  17

  Lothar Holz remembered being sickened when his father revealed to him what his family had been during the Second World War.

  He was eight years old and attending a private academy in Bonn.

  While the public perception was one of danger for unrepentant Nazis still residing in Germany after the war, the reality was quite different. During the 1950s, in the little enclave where Holz spent his formative years, there was safety. The authorities tended to look the other way when Lothar's father and friends were about.

  Young Lothar knew some of what had happened.

  Hushed words. Furtive whispers.

  Oftentimes his father would drink to excess. Deep in drunken melancholia, he would curse those forces that had conspired to thwart his dreams. They had crushed all hope of the promised, glorious Reich.

  It was only when Lothar had seen pictures of the atrocities committed by his countrymen that he confronted his father. He was a brave boy, in short pants and cuffed felt jacket, standing up to the world-weary drunkard.

  He told of the photographs from the book of a boy he had met, the son of an American serviceman who was part of the occupying force in postwar Germany.

  He told of the half-naked, emaciated men and women standing in the snow. Of the bodies.

  He had expected his father to be furious, but instead the elder Holz grew deathly quiet.

  Leadenly he sat down on their gaily printed sofa.

  He beckoned his son to sit next to him.

  "You have heard of the so-called atrocities before, have you not?" his father had said softly.

  Lothar admitted that he had.

  "How long ago did you first hear?"

  "I do not remember, Father. All my life."

  "And why did you wait until now to question me?"

  "The pictures," young Lothar had said desperately. He remembered one of a group of German ci-vilians being led past a row of corpses. They were Jewish women who had died on a forced march. Des-iccation had made their faces chillingly deformed.

  They almost appeared to have been mummified.

  "The pictures were horrible." Lothar shivered at the recent memory.

  "And why was that?"

  "Well.. .these people were dead. Murdered."

  His father stroked his chin pensively. "Would it This was what she said to her young husband—a camp guard who saw his marriage as an opportunity to move up—many times over.

  But the person she had the hardest time convinc-ing, apparently, was herself. She had climbed into a bathtub of warm water one sunny afternoon when Lothar was four. With her she had brought her husband's straight razor.

  After that, Lothar and his father were alone. The year was 1951.

  And from that day forward, not an hour went by in his young life where Lothar did not remember his mother fondly. But the day his father hinted to him what his mother had been during the war would alter his perceptions of right and wrong forever.

  Lothar had received a fine education. English, Spanish and French were all taught at his exclusive school, in addition to his native German. He learned each language fluently. Mathematics was never his forte, nor any of the sciences. But he was persuasive and well liked, by students and instructors alike.

  However, this early acceptance by his peers was short-lived. Once he had learned the truth about his mother, his grades began to fail.

  His father was called, but he didn't seem interested in his son's problems. The elder Holz's drinking had grown worse with each passing day, and though he was still a relatively young man, he looked older and more haggard as his advanced alcoholism ravaged his syste
m.

  He died nearly a year to the day he had first told his son the truth about his mother.

  At nine years of age, Lothar Holz was an orphan.

  He had no other family. The only relative his father had ever spoken of was his father-in-law, but the man had died during the war, a victim of the Russian and American advance in the death throes of the old power system.

  He thought he was completely alone.

  Lothar was in the small flat where he and his father lived. It was the day after his father's death. There would be a service of some sort, someone had told him, but he didn't wish to attend. Lothar didn't love his father, although he missed his presence in the shabby little apartment. It was a strange feeling for a nine-year-old to have, and with no one to share it with, Lothar had sat in a dusty corner of his father's bedroom and cried for hours.

  He was sniffling quietly when he heard a knock at the door.

  He assumed it was another woman from the apartment building with a plate of pastries. When he went to answer it, he found a reed-thin old man in a black topcoat and gloves. The man asked if he could come in. Lothar assumed he was a mortician, such were his gaunt features and pallor. He let him inside.

  The man had stepped through the apartment carefully, as if he did not want the grimy carpet to soil the soles of his shoes. He seemed displeased at the stack of empty liquor bottles piled on the floor.

  Lothar felt ashamed. He wished he had thought to throw out the bottles. Quickly he tried to pick up a few items of clothing that were draped over the backs of chairs.

  "Do not bother with that, Lothar," the old man had said.

  He sat down on the sofa, careful to first brush it free of crumbs.

  "I'm sorry," Lothar said with a timid half shrug.

  He felt as if he was apologizing for his entire life.

  "Do not apologize," the man said. "Never apologize for that which you cannot control."

  Lothar almost said he was sorry again but stopped himself. He nodded his understanding to the man.

  "Good." The man sat straight on the battered sofa. His back was as rigid as a board. He spoke without preamble. "Lothar, did you ever wonder where your father got his money?"